The Goths Tale
by Stolen Valkyrie
Summary: The story of one doomed never to feel, and the relationship doomed to die. Character death.


Hey all! Here's the new fic – I actually wrote it for a school project (shh, don't tell my lit teacher it's fanfiction, k?) lol but I was told I should post it, so here ya go. Please, read and review, constructive criticism LOVED but flames – not so much.

The title of this fic is what it was called for my project, simply because I cannot think of another name.

Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans, and it is far too early in the morning for me to be creative with this. However, if you're male, tall, have blond hair and purple eyes, give me a call.

* * *

Once upon a time there was a girl. She was no ordinary girl – she had special powers all her own. Powers to move that which had no feelings of its own, inanimate objects, and powers of her own dark energy, by projecting her emotions onto such an object. In this girl lived many other girls, different Aspects of her personality. They wore cloaks of color to represent their cause: grey was meek, green stood for courage, and red represented anger. She was born this way, and so she would remain. Inside, she lived in harmony, creating an equilibrium, a balance of power, between her and her emotions. And her exterior reflected her interior, her safety net. She appeared cold, distant, and lonely; simplified, she was complete. To ever move one way was to sacrifice the stability of the system, and to sacrifice the stability of the system was to sacrifice the stability of the world.

For in her, in her breeding and blood, down to her very core, she held a terror so powerful that if it were unleashed, the human world and Earth would cease to exist. In place of a human race there would be a demon army that none, metaphysical or otherwise, could hope to stand against. She was the daughter of a Great Demon and a mortal woman, and the strong power that coursed through her weak mortal veins was too much to handle alone, without training.

And so she was sent, far away, to a planet whose people could help her control and seal away that awful potential. She learned to refine and water down her emotions, to lock them into an interface that would not allow for accidents and dangerous interference. She meditated and chanted hundreds upon thousands of times a day, living in a place where the only point to life was to harmonize oneself into nothing, absolute oblivion without emotion. And there she lived and grew and refined and existed and grew and refined until finally she was at the state of nothing on Earth, where she was distant and cold and lonely, but safe.

And so she was sent back to Earth, to protect it from those who would wish to harm it. And so she waged two wars, one against crime from the outside and one against the crime from within herself that longed to be outside. She was merely a tool for the state, the government, to put down those who would destroy it while existed without another thought, as she always had.

And it was thus that she met the others. There were only three at the time; she was the fourth, and the fifth and fictitious sixth would join later on. She looked at them and yet did not see, heard them and yet did not listen. And yet she went with them, to have allies in the one war, and never expecting or wanting them to understand the other. And then, she found that the longer she lived with them, the longer she interacted and fought and existed with others, the more she was coaxed and bribed and forced out of her rocky shell. They might have been water over stone in her cold, dark eyes, but after thousands of years even water can wear down a stone's impregnable surface.

The Tall One had always been the source of comfort, the sheltering tree over a budding, thorny rosebush. He would never press or bother, but was quick to defend and quick to comfort. An easygoing nature coupled with a quick but short temper, he was solid, but not without flaw. Where she had never before considered herself as odd, he was carefully obsessed. He perceived the world around him as those with unnecessary hate, and showed her that a cool surface could belie turbulent waters. He saw the world with one emotional eye and one red, critical, manufactured eye – the very science that kept him alive was the bane of his existence. And then he learned, as he lived with her, who saw him as normal, different in the way that everyone is different, that perhaps his flaws were no worse than anyone else's, just more visible.

The Acrobatic One was sharp. His dark, brooding, birdlike eyes saw and understood, calculated and assessed as they flashed about. His nervous energy often made him seem large and overbearing in a room, and outside it seemed as though he could take flight, dashing from rooftop to rooftop and quickly hunting down those who offended the law. Once his keen eyes locked upon his prey, he would go in for a quick, efficient "kill". He never would actually kill. Nor would he be so quick to action, were it not out of habit and years of training. His personality was strong, yet gentle and understanding. He seemed born a leader, and while his heart and courage were tall, his height had not yet caught up. Once it had, he would be unstoppable.

Last came the Green One. Quick to laugh and smile, and quick to feel sorrow and sympathy, he was the one who held the motley crew together. His emotions were stronger than his head, which, while not saying much, did mean a lot. He wore his heart on his sleeve, and often had it trodden upon or stolen. His substantial emotional base came from the support and love he had for his friends, who meant the world to him. He took them, with both their strengths and weaknesses, and embraced them. When they would reject such a welcoming but sometimes overprotective attitude, he would be hurt, and yet bounce back with a word or a touch or a glance or a smile. His ability to change was integrated into his core, and he could and often did change, to embrace those traits that were characteristic to his many forms. And it was he that, with his sympathy, was the first to actively reach out and ensnare the empath.

She was drawn to him, slowly and inexplicably at first, like a moth to a flame. She knew he would burn her, knew he would be her downfall and perhaps even death, and so she resisted. She threw up every wall and gate and burned every bridge she came to, ran faster and faster to return to her dark shell. She abused him, left him alone and hanging and ignorant, and took it upon herself to utterly protect herself and destroy his natural curiosity, his want for human connections. She never wished to lead him on.

What she never bargained on was his stamina.

He found her at every corner, nibbling grain after grain off of her stony surface, aided by the tall one with his pick-axe and the acrobatic one with his numerous pecks. Slowly her surface began to crack, and she realized that she could feel, if only a little at a time, and so her surface began to crumble. She peeked through the holes, shading her eyes from the piercing rays of the sun, but slowly became accustomed to the bright light, the sound of wind and the smell of rain. She longed to rise up and meet it, but dared not. If ever she moved too far one way, stepped out of the ring that held their power and her stability intact, she would lose control.

The first time he had shown her more than just gentle camaraderie, hinted at something more than their tentative relationship, she had (out of naïveté) overreacted and exploded. Unfortunately, their surrounding landscape changed as well. As Love had broken free of her bindings and stepped tenderly out of the circle, her dark sister Hate, previously connected to Love by a single chain, was freed as well, and did much more damage than her soft-hearted sister. However, with the help and support of her friends, she was able to quell the dark one and bind them into herself, once again creating the white oblivion she held when all were united.

He gave her space for a while after that, letting her slowly build up the courage to come to him. He understood that there was a connections, and that opposites attract, but nothing more. She understood a greater picture, which caused her pain to no end. For, as she had concluded thousands of times after walking many different paths in her head, there was no way to let love loose and yet leave hate chained. There was no way that her friends could understand this incredible complex, and so there was no way she could make progress beyond a certain point. The fact remained that, while there was no love without hate, or hate without love, they could not exist at precisely the same moment, and by alternating she ran the risk of a complete takeover by one, and loss of the other. The stakes were just too high.

And so days went by, seasons changed, babies were born and old and young and innocent and guilty died and lived by the improbability of the life they were given. And so things went on with the group, adding members, creating new friends, expanding their networks. And so she lived, and grew, and matured, and her insecurities and fears and heartbreaks died down into a gentle yet insistent pain, as one with arthritis feels the ache in their joints; reminders of bygone times.

And so days went by, seasons changed, babies were born and old and young and innocent and guilty died and lived by the improbability of the life they were given. And so he grew, and changed, and matured, and the ferocity and wildness of his limitless emotions grew and evolved into a love of nature and friends and everything that he encountered. And while he still was trodden upon, and hurt, and alone on occasion, he bounced back quick as a fox and continued to grow. He began to understand human nature, and the differences and similarities, and started to make the transition from boy to man. And it was in his new physical and mental strengths that he could be a tree to gather around and take refuge under, and a friend who would loyally keep one company when all other company seemed lost.

And so it was, one morning in the spring of the year, their eyes met and they realized that there was something more than just the puppy love that had shaded those eyes years before. There was something much stronger, and another strong force to so keep the system steady; Love and Pain. His understanding and stored catalog of human emotion and reaction showed him the end of his path much faster this time, and he began to grasp, his fingertips barely touched the idea that this could never work. She could never conquer her heritage; he could not deny his thirst for reciprocation. While Love could exist and thrive and grow, she would be cut down brutally by her distant, dark cousin; Anguish. Their differences would drive them apart; and if she was not careful enough, she could destroy the world. And so she vowed then to leave him, as he vowed then to love her and be destroyed with her.

And so it was, one morning in the spring of the year, their eyes met and they realized that there was something more than just the puppy love that had shaded those eyes years before. And as he looked her over with his maturing green eyes, he wondered that he did not see before. The inner turmoil, the nothing, the black hole of emotion that she was all these years – he wanted to delve into, to understand, to feel and share her happiness and pain, her love and her anger; he wanted to know her. And so he resigned himself to know pain and sorrow in the future, if he could have but a glimpse of her love now. And she promised that she would save him, to know that he could be happy even if it meant her own suffering.

As night cloaked the city, ushering in the sharp winds that still clung to winter, she made to steal away. He met her at the gate. Her heart – her iron, cold heart – fell to the floor and shattered into a million pieces. It mattered not. As long as her head remained as nothing, she would survive. The world would survive. She always assured herself that she did not matter; all that mattered was protecting the world from the seed of evil inside herself. She tried to explain, between the emotionless tears and the suppressed, aching sorrow. She told him there was nothing. She knew he would not understand that if the something that was there grew, it would destroy the world. And so she simplified it, modified the truth, and told him there was nothing.

He longed to believe. He stretched and worked and whipped every atom in his body to contemplate and analyze and just understand what she was saying, what she meant, what the unspoken words that slipped down her pale cheeks with every teardrop yearned to say. And when she stopped, when the silence stretched upon them like the wind over the desert, he began. He pleaded with her to understand his predicament, his nature. He told her of his longing to show her that he could understand, that he could stay by her side and weather the ups and the downs and still be standing when the grand finale came. He could be there to build upon, a solid rock to shelter her degrading shell when the harsh rains came. He could be hers.

And as her eyes rose to meet his, her beautiful, dark, flickering eyes, a chain snapped in her mind. Every single link dissolved. And as Hope rose up to meet him, with her hand reaching out and her eyes shining light, Despair dropped to her core and covered her heart.

And as their fingertips touched, she changed. Her hand snapped back to her body as if burned, her core folding in two, the remaining hand trying desperately to cover her ears from the roaring emanating from her mind. For, without the leverage of that cord to hold the others in place, they began to disintegrate and divide and shatter until none were left. Without an inescapable boundary, the Aspects ravaged and tore her body, battering her remaining shell from the inside out until it splintered and lay in fragments on the cold, wet earth. She screamed.

She screamed so that the whole world could hear her. Into her scream she poured the hurt and pain and love and friendship and everything she held dear in this world, and her scream warned those of a dangerous cross such as herself, of the pain it would cause others, the pain it would eventually cause themselves. And while screaming, while feeling herself ripped apart and dying painfully and slowly, while the demon seed began to take more and more control, she executed her own end.

And he watched her as she blindly grasped for something in her cloak, and his shock and inability to understand the situation prevented him from reaching her in time, before the hypodermic needle sank into her flesh. The metallic grey liquid flowed quickly into her veins, and within a minute she was dead. She had known that it would happen, sooner than later, and she was prepared, although his heart would never be. And so the Green One held her in his arms, and wept, and never really recovered. He lived the rest of his days saving others, but always fighting the most desperate battles to save others from themselves. For he never forgot that dying scream, the cry of a raven tolling death bells to all who did not understand.

* * *

Hey! Hope you enjoyed!!! Again, reviews and constructive criticism LOVED and appreciated! Thanks a bunch! 


End file.
